Open AccessAssessment of CMIP5 multimodel mean for the historical climate of Africa
Author(s) -
Zebaze Sinclaire,
Jain Shipra,
Salunke Popat,
Shafiq Shayan,
Mishra Saroj K.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
atmospheric science letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.951
H-Index - 45
ISSN - 1530-261X
DOI - 10.1002/asl.926
Subject(s) - cru , precipitation , climatology , mean radiant temperature , environmental science , common spatial pattern , climate change , climate model , spatial distribution , coupled model intercomparison project , geography , physical geography , statistics , mathematics , meteorology , geology , ecology , biology , remote sensing
The fidelity of 28 CMIP5 models and their multimodel mean (MMM) in simulating the historical climate of Africa is assessed in this study. For the historical period of 1975–2005, the spatial distribution of the seasonal precipitation is simulated with pattern correlation coefficients (PCCs) of 0.91, 0.95, 0.94, and 0.95 for March–May (MAM), June–August (JJA), September–November (SON), and December–February (DJF) seasons, respectively, when compared with the CRU data. For the surface temperature, the PCCs are 0.96, 0.98, 0.83, and 0.97, respectively, for the four seasons mentioned in the preceding. The root mean square error (RMSE) for the precipitation are 0.86, 0.77, 0.97, and 1.05 mm day −1 for the MAM, JJA, SON, and DJF seasons, respectively, whereas for the temperature, the respective values are 1.64, 1.28, 1.68, and 1.87°C. The study also assesses the performance of the models over four sub‐regions of Africa, viz. North, South, East, and West Africa. The observational trends show large spatial heterogeneity in warming for each season. The MMM does not show the strong warming over Africa and simulate generally a weak warming over most of the region. The MMM fails to capture the sign and magnitude of the observed precipitation trends.